Reply to "Looking to Buy"

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Originally posted by phill1:
Dear Jay Holt,
The comments offered by the famous Jay Allen are right on the money. Just last week a guy came to see me after he had purchased a 71 Pushbutton Pantera, a fairly rare car. He was all smiles. I looked it over carefully and found he has very small but meaningful rust/paint issues: on a rocker panel, paint bubbles on both front lower fenders, that he "thought" were just "minor" items. Proper repairs will likely require a complete repaint and proper (cut out old metal-replace with new--sanding to bare metal rust inhibitors etc.) body repairs before the repaint. His car is running a bit hot, so a new radiator, high flow water pump,new fans and replace rubber and metal coolant lines and so on. This alone is a 10K to 15k bit of work. So his 27k car is now a 37k to 41k car. Panteras are NOT cheap but there are a lot of dopes out there who find out to their suprise that they have to dump 30 to 40 thousand just to bring the car up to acceptable standards. Look at the detailed photos of Duddlesons car at 45K versus Jim Dixons car at about 30K. They are both good cars. I have found that someone must really love the car above alternatives for ownership to make sense.
Otherwise, a 20k Corvette makes far more sense. But for those of us who look at the car and revel in it's style and the V8 growling away, it is a car in a class by itself.

[This message has been edited by phill1 (edited 11-21-2003).]

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